[i]On The So-Called Undead Hollows,
By Anton Sokolov[/i]

In researching the rat plague and the Weepers that it creates, I have surmised a connection between those who present aberrant plague symptoms and bearers of a certain dark mark on their breast. These aberrant sufferers seem to suffer the plague's madness but not as much of its physical sores, weeping pustules and other grotesque effects.

While Weepers are very much living, these so-called Hollows have extremely suppressed vital signs. I was hard-pressed to find a pulse on these Hollow infected, while Weeper pulses are clear and rapid. I have noted that in this and many other regards the Hollows are akin to walking corpses, though naturally such an idea is irrational and to be ignored.

The bodies of the Hollows have many old wounds on them, some hanging still open and showing little to no signs of immunological response or healing progress. The more severe the injuries and the more numerous, clearly the greater the mental strain upon the Hollow - the ones who are truly mad have clearly been 'killed' many times. Why they are able to function after such traumatic injuries is something I am still studying. Some samples in my laboratory have been opened by dissection as I study their continued automation and aggression.

Those Hollows still capable of speech have expressed delusions of dying and returning many times, of losing humanity upon death and craving some way to regain it. They speak of a curse - more pagan and puerile nonsense - that has been placed on them by the Outsider, that mythical figure of such childish tales. They point to the blemish as the mark of the curse and its proof. Absurd, to be sure, yet still interesting that so many of them tell the same tale so consistently. There must be some figure in the ghettos spreading such slop, or perhaps it is the word of the Overseers blaming the plague as divine wrath and the work of villainous powers. Fools commenting on fools.

Still, the concept of a test subject who will always survive whatever I put them to is extremely intriguing...